Ribbons Undone
by lionesseyes13
Summary: During the battle against Blayce, Loey reflects on love and loss. At the very least, a one-sided Loey/Tobe.


Disclaimer: I own nothing except whatever faint gleams of originality you might spot in this sad excuse for a fanfiction.

Author's Note: This was written for the September Challenge at the Tamora Pierce Writing Experiment forum. The challenge was to write a romance in a battle, so that's what I attempted to do here. Please understand that I don't have my copy of _Lady Knight_ with me at college, so if I make any mistakes, kindly correct me in a review.

Ribbons Undone

Loesia didn't want to kill the blonde Scanran man. She didn't want to push her spear through the kinks of his armor and then cut through his yielding flesh. She didn't wish for blood to harden around the spear's point, making it more difficult to remove the weapon she had thrust into his heart than to shove it in. She didn't want the copper streaks to line her weapon when she finally managed to yank the spear from his chest.

Certainly, she didn't want the stench of blood and death to seep into her mouth and her nostrils. She definitely didn't desire to see the surprise and then the pain flash through his eyes as her spear stopped his beating heart. Yet, life had endured after what should have been a final physical death—his eyes had continued to see after his heart had failed him—but there had been only agony, and no enlightenment, in his eyes. The end had only been dark, painful, and bloody. There had been nothing light or liberating about it, and, after the agony, there would only ever be blankness in his eyes.

His eyes shouldn't have been forced to go blank at all, just as she shouldn't have been compelled to slay him. Before she had met him, she had thought all Scanrans were soulless brutes. They had pillaged her village and murdered her family, forcing her to depend upon the charity of strangers. They had destroyed her home, making it impossible for her to believe that there would ever be a permanent refuge for her. Even Haven had only been a place where food and shelter were guaranteed and she had been able to make enough friends so that it felt like another home before that home, too, had been ruined, and she had been kidnapped.

Being kidnapped hadn't been so awful with him as her guard. He hadn't pinched her, punched her, or screamed at her. He was strong, but never hurtful. Sometimes, when he looked at her, there had even been an odd gentleness in his eyes, and sometimes he would tell her stories about his own daughter, Fria, whom he said was Loey's age and within an inch of her height.

Fria. There was another girl who would grow up without her father. Maybe, if this horrible war ever ended, she would be able to track Fria down to explain to the other fatherless child that she had never really meant to kill the Scanran soldier.

She had just trained for so many months at Haven, practicing dozens of ways to kill and injure people that doing it in real life was easy. At Haven, when she practiced with Gydo, Tobe, and even the Lady Knight when the commander could dedicate the time to helping them train, she had imagined that killing would be difficult, but it wasn't. Killing was easy. Coping with the fact that she was a murderer—just as guilty as the men who had destroyed her village and slain her family—that would be the true challenge.

Yet, she had not actually chosen to kill the man. The man had chosen to slice at Tobe's head with his blood-soaked sword, and she had reflexively chosen to save Tobe. She hadn't even thought about what she was doing as she plunged the spear into her guard's chest. Her intent had been to save, and not to kill. It was only after she had saved that she realized that she had killed.

Of course, she couldn't have let Tobe die. Tobe made her feel like the sun was shining even when its light was eclipsed behind thunderheads. She cracked all her best jokes around him just so that his lips would twitch into his crooked grin. When they were training together, she brushed her body against his as much as possible just to feel his sweat mingling with hers. In the mess hall, if she was eating with him, even the fattiest meat tasted like a filet fit for the king's table.

At first, she had thought what she felt for him was nothing more than friendship, but she never had urges to press her body against Gydo's. She certainly never caught herself daydreaming about what it would feel like to have Gydo's lips brush against hers, but she often found herself wondering if she would faint or scream with delight if Tobe ever kissed her before the world ended.

"You're real pretty, you know?" Tobe panted, turning wide eyes upon her as the man who had been about to kill him collapsed. His hair was matted with sweat, blood dotted his cheeks, and a combination of sweat and blood spangled his clothing, but Loey thought that he had never looked so attractive to her as he did now. He was alive, and that, in her opinion, would be enough to make him eternally gorgeous.

"I'm a mess," protested Loey, knowing that her hair was stringy with sweat and Scanran blood stained her hands now. Worse still, that was only the mess that would be visible to others. On the inside, her soul was in more disarray than her body. She had killed somebody without even thinking about it. She had ripped her soul apart for Tobe's sake, and she would never know if he was worth such a dreadful sacrifice. All she would know now was that love wasn't honeybee kisses and butterfly touches. It was bloody passion. It was knowing that you would murder to keep someone you loved more than your own soul alive. It was knowing that if that person died you would feel as crushed and as unable to move as you would if there was a wagon on your chest.

"You saved my life, which will always make you pretty to me," Tobe answered, pivoting to parry an attack from another Scanran soldier.

As she watched him, paralyzed with fear that she wouldn't be able to save him from death's hungry hands this time, she couldn't help but remember how she had once pictured love as two people being tied together like apron strings by holy vows exchanged before a priest or priestess. Now, she knew that love wasn't being tied together with someone like apron strings; it was becoming undone for somebody like a ribbon, and undone ribbons were so easy to cut like she had snipped the ribbon binding her Scanran soldier to life.


End file.
